Obviously no-one told the LibDems. Yesterday they launched their election campaign leaflets in London which stoop to new lows in lying to the public to trick them into voting LibDem.

Three leaflets that I’ve seen all use a similar tactic of exploiting voters’ ignorance of the European electoral system into fooling them into voting tactically as they might in a general election for the UK Parliament in Westminster.

The leaflet from Paul Burstow, LibDem MP for the south London constituency of Sutton and Cheam, is typical.

“It’s so close here” declares the headline. “Elections in Sutton and Cheam are always a close finish between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives.” To the side is a big bar chart showing the LibDems with 47%, Conservatives on 41% and Labour with just 12%. “Here in Sutton and Cheam, elections are between the LibDems and the Conservatives”, a callout box reminds us.

It doesn’t say where these figures come from or give any indication as to why they might be relevant. And the fact is, they’re not just irrelevant but totally misleading. This is the result of the last general election for Westminster where the vote was indeed a close race between the LibDems and the Tories, with Labour trailing a poor third and unlikely ever to take the seat under Westminster’s first-past-the-post electoral system.

What the leaflet doesn’t say is that the electoral system for the European Parliament is totally different and there’s no need for anyone to vote tactically no matter which party they support.

The European election on 4th June isn’t an election “in Sutton and Cheam”. The Euro vote is grouped into large regions which return several Euro MPs each and the system uses a form of proportional representation, ensuring that very few votes are “wasted” on failed candidates that don’t get elected.

Sutton and Cheam voters will have their votes pooled together with all other Londoners and used to elect eight Euro MPs. It doesn’t make the slightest difference how close the vote may be between two parties in any Westminster constituency. People will be voting for a party and not a candidate and any party that gets around 8% of the total vote across the whole of London will get at least one Euro MP.

In the last Euro election in 2004, the LibDems didn’t come first but third. The Tories and Labour both took 3 seats in London each. The LibDems, the UK Independence Party and the Greens took one Euro MP each. And the LibDems’ vote at 15% across London trailed well behind Labour on 25%. So why aren’t the LibDems showing the figures that matter from the last Euro election rather than the ones from Westminster that have no significance at all?

The leaflet from Tom Brake, LibDem MP for Carshalton and Wallington in south London, takes the same trick to even more sordid depths.

We get a misleading bar chart similar to Paul Burstow’s, showing the Westminster constituency vote from the last general election. Here, as in Sutton and Cheam, the Westminster vote is close between the LibDems and the Tories with Labour coming a very distant unelectable third.

But the language of deceit here is even stronger. “This election is going to be a tight contest and every vote will make a difference… With Labour out of the race in Sutton, more and more people are backing the Liberal Democrats to win.”

Did you see what they did there? “Labour out of the race in Sutton”? It’s not a Sutton race, it’s a London race, and in that London race Labour are still in a stronger position than the LibDems even despite the floundering government in Westminster.

And what does it mean that “people are backing the Liberal Democrats to win”? This isn’t a winner-takes-all election like we have for Westminster. All the three big parties are likely to get at least one Euro MP out of eight in London and it’s very likely that smaller parties like the Greens and UKIP won’t come away empty-handed. The real question is whether the LibDems will be able to increase their single current London Euro MP to two or whether large chunks of their vote will get skimmed off at the top by a strong Tory party and at the bottom by people voting for smaller parties like the Greens and UKIP through genuine preference or as a protest against Westminster’s dirty politics.

The theme continues with more lies elsewhere on the leaflet. In a section attacking Labour we’re told that “Labour cannot win in Sutton… voting Labour will only help the Conservatives win”.

Excuse me? This is a proportional representation election. Voting Labour won’t help the Conservatives. It’ll help Labour. And once again the entirely misleading idea of whether anyone might “win in Sutton” totally obscures the relevant matter of London-wide voting.

The Greens get the same treatment. “The Greens have no chance of winning in Sutton”, the leaflet says. Well, in the last Euro election in 2004 the Greens picked up 8% of the London vote, giving them a single Euro MP just like the LibDems. Things will be a little harder for the Greens this time in London as there will now be only eight London Euro MPs compared with the previous nine, but the Greens are still in with a fighting chance. The LibDems’ leaflet is a shamefaced attempt to con Green voters into considering a “tactical” vote for another party even though they have no need to do so. In the Euro election, every vote really does count. Need I say again that it matters not one bit who might “win in Sutton” in this London-wide vote?

The LibDems’ lying leaflets aren’t just a south London phenomenon. Up in Camden, LibDem leaflets in the Holborn and St Pancras constituency use the familiar Westminster general election bar chart to show just how “close” things are between the LibDems and Labour there. In this case it does at least say that these are “general election” results but the complete irrelevance of them is not made clear. In fact, the Tories’ bar is marked with a big box that says, “Can’t win here” — once again trying to trick people into making a choice between the LibDems and Labour and giving up a potential Tory vote as futile. This is bait and switch. It’s no different to a financial adviser showing a client a set of performance figures for one investment while actually selling them another. The text continues the same theme: “Elections here in Holborn and St Pancras are always a close finish between your LibDem team and Gordon Brown’s Labour Party.” This is an outright lie: In the 2004 Euro election the LibDems in “Holborn and St Pancras” (really, the London region) came a distant third to the Tories and Labour.

I’ve been studying and following politics for 25 years and I’m well aware that election leaflets aren’t written under a solemn oath to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Depending on your affection for the party concerned, election handouts are either good public relations or evil propaganda, designed to put themselves in the best possible light and their opponents in the worst. A party or candidate’s own successes will be amplified and their shortcomings quietly sidestepped. Opponents will be lambasted for the slightest misjudgements and their genuine triumphs ignored. That’s how it goes and it’s hard to imagine that in a vigorous, healthy and above all a free democracy it could ever be much else.

But these LibDem leaflets go way beyond legitimate criticism of their opponents and into tricking the voters to abandon an opposing vote by giving the wholly false impression that there’s a need to vote tactically in the Euro election. That it’s the LibDems doing this — a party that campaigns hard to introduce proportional representation for the Westminster parliament as a supposedly “fairer” system — makes it all the more appalling. PR would give the LibDems a big boost at Westminster, but in an election where PR is already in place and doesn’t appear to work to their advantage in some areas the LibDems try to con the public into understanding less about how their vote works than if they hadn’t read the leaflet at all.

So I’m calling them on it. This isn’t politics but a subtle and insidious form of electoral fraud. These leaflets are deliberately designed to deceive, making statements that the LibDems know will be misinterpreted by almost everyone. The LibDems have been relatively unscathed by the Westminster expenses scandal. If nothing else they have far fewer MPs there to be making claims. But frankly I’d much rather a few LibDems had been caught feathering their own nests than deliberately trying to subvert democracy as they’re doing here. Sarah Ludford MEP, Paul Burstow MP, Tom Brake MP and the LibDems in Holborn and St Pancras have shown themselves completely unable to tell the truth where it counts and therefore unfit to hold public office — and I’ll say exactly the same thing for any party that tries to exploit and increase voters’ ignorance of the electoral system for their own advantage in this way.

There’s no need to vote tactically in the Euro elections on 4th June. Just vote for the party you prefer and there’s every chance you’ll help to elect at least one Euro MP for them. Don’t let the LibDems or anyone else fool you into thinking otherwise.

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With thanks to all the people that have uploaded their election leaflets to The Straight Choice and to the Straight Choice team for making the whole thing possible.